AFTAs 2022: Best communication infrastructure initiative—Symphony

Overview

Symphony is a secure and compliance-enabled markets infrastructure and technology platform where solutions for B2B and B2C are built or integrated to standardize, automate and innovate financial services workflows. Symphony currently serves over 1,000 institutions.

What problem does it solve?   

Symphony’s technology addresses a need for financial institutions to stay secure and compliant, which is critical in times of market volatility and digital disruption. This need is more crucial than ever in the wake of the September 2022 charges brought by the SEC against 16 Wall Street firms for their failure to archive electronic communications and their employees’ use of personal devices. The Symphony platform mitigates such risks by enabling appropriate governance and compliant business collaboration and communication.

Measurables

The growth in the number of users of the platform―approximately 400,000 in 2019 to 600,000 in 2022―shows that Symphony continues to play a relevant role in the global financial services industry. Symphony also made several acquisitions in the last 18 months, including trader voice and electronic communication company Cloud9 Technologies, and counterparty mapping platform StreetLinx.

Future developments

• Symphony has introduced a number of innovations to the market, including an embedded collaboration platform, instant voice communication, and a federated offering.
• These innovations showcase the power of voice escalation and real-time connectivity.
• Symphony will continue to develop these features to better serve financial services firms.

Why they won

Symphony, considered only a few years ago to be a mere start-up and disrupter, is now very much a part of the industry mainstream, thanks to its instant messaging service that supports encryption, group messaging, content sharing and third-party plugins. Its win in the best communication infrastructure initiative category of this year’s AFTAs is testament to its impressive network of over 600,000 users and its ability to mitigate operational and regulatory risks by providing firms with a communication platform that is both robust and compliant with regulations.